Parking hikes dissuade visitors
So the street parking downtown will now be $1.50 an hour? I won't be going there. You compare that rate with those in other cities like Savannah and Charleston. At least in those cities, there's a reason to go downtown. Here the only attraction for me is the library, which means I'll be using the branches where parking is free.
It's the same with the few other services offered downtown. Why go downtown when you can get the same services with free parking and far greater convenience elsewhere?
Mary A. Wood
Celebrate our past in manufacturing
I'm a materials engineer from Vanderbilt and think a recent letter writer's recommendation to do something historic on the Eureka Foundry site celebrating the last remnant of the manufacturing era that brought so much wealth to this city for many years is a great idea.
I had a slight injury in the sand-casting lab at Vandy many years ago before I graduated in 1965. I got a bloody hand from it and ended up at the ER, sand covered and bleeding heavily. When asked if I was hit by a truck, I replied, "No I was playing in the sand pile, and a lab mate hit me with his shovel." After they finished laughing, they sewed me up.
The whole materials business has changed with the digital world of producing material designs and manufacturing today. Wish I could be 16 again in this new world, but I'd love us to be able to show how things were done before.
Susan Spurgeon
Save the lowlands for coming storms
We've all seen cloudbursts — those brief storms of such intensity that the ground can't soak it up and the drains can't handle it. All over the world now, similar storms are not brief. They can last for hours, or all day, delivering more water than our development systems are designed to deal with, destroying everything in their path.
We've been mostly lucky in Chattanooga, but our luck won't hold forever. We need to set aside our lowlands where heavy rainfalls naturally accumulate and refuse to let them be filled and developed. Too many people and structures are already at risk.
Allen Miller
Unthinkable what Trump might wreak
On Sept. 22, former President Trump expressed a wish that we lived in a supposed better past time, in which retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley could be executed for treason. In contrast, he has denounced as witch hunts the sentences pronounced on those who attacked our nation's capitol, threatened the lives of our elected officials and attempted to overthrow a free and fair election.
It is shocking that he is by far the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. In just a few months, this man, who has done more than any man in my living memory to subvert the Constitution, could be placing his hand on the Bible and swearing to uphold it, with silently complicit Republican leaders standing behind him.
By that time, he could very well be on trial, or even convicted, for attempting to subvert a free and fair election. The picture of a convicted felon pardoning himself and hundreds of others who have betrayed us all, and calling for the execution of faithful public servants who dare to defy him, is unthinkable.
Sadly, for half of the American electorate, this scenario seems not only thinkable, but desirable. What have we come to, and how much further could we yet fall?
Herbert K. Lea
Chickamauga, Ga.
Republicans bribed by Big Pharma?
The good news is that President Biden has authorized Medicare to negotiate the price on 10 major drugs.
Just like lowering the price of insulin, this will take time.
Last year, Medicare paid out billions for these 10 prescription drugs. The congressional bill to do this was passed a year ago (not one Republican member voted for it). They claim that they want to slow federal spending. But they vote in favor of the pharmaceutical companies.
The only conclusion I can draw is that they are putting on a charade.
They support high drug prices because these greedy companies give them big campaign donations. Sure looks like the GOP is bribed to hurt people.
Jack Montgomery
Murphy, N.C.